Communicating Tourism Sustainability Online

The Case of Victoria Falls World Heritage Site

Maria Garbelli a,c,
Asta Adukaite a,b, and
Lorenzo Cantoni a,b
a
UNESCO Chair in ICT to Develop and Promote Sustainable
Tourism in World Heritage Sites
b
webatelier.net
Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano, Switzerland)
c
Department of Economics, Management and Statistics
Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca (Milan, Italy)
{maria.garbelli; asta.adukaite; lorenzo.cantoni}@usi.ch

Abstract
The debate about tourism sustainability, and its contribution to local development has
been very active, especially in connection with UNESCO World Heritage Sites,
whose preservation is of the utmost importance. In recent times, the pervasiveness of
ICTs within the tourism experience and industry has called for more research on how
ICTs can help attaining the sustainable tourism goals. In this paper, ninety-one
available online resources have been studied to assess the presence of sustainability-
related contents in Victoria Falls, one of the most known WHSs in Africa, so to
measure how important it is for information providers covering this topic.

Keywords: Sustainable Tourism; Information and Communication Technologies;

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

1 Introduction
The World Heritage Convention clearly states that apart from conservation and
protection of world heritage of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), its
“presentation” (UNESCO, 1972: p. 3) is also among its primary aims. The main
challenges are thus to reconcile the preservation of World Heritage Sites (hereafter
WHS) and tourism, to communicate sites’ heritage value, and to thus foster
responsible and respectful behaviour among visitors. UNESCO’s main strategy to
achieve these goals is via sustainable tourism (Ali and Frew, 2013) in order to ensure
the long-term viability of their heritage (Lo Piccolo, Leone and Pizzuto, 2012), to
benefit the local community (Cantoni 2013), and ultimately to enable a high-quality
tourist experience through the UNESCO label and the site Outstanding Universal
Value (Marcotte and Bourdeau, 2012). A prospective traveller, who is interested in
visiting a WHS, goes online, and accesses several online resources (mainly websites)
looking for satisfying her/his information needs (Wang & Fesenmaier, 2013; The
2013 Traveler's Road to Decision: Affluent Insights, 2014). In place, travelers from
emerging countries may still lack awareness of the need for responsible and
sustainable tourism behavior (Weaver, 2012): environmental problems in the tourism
industry could be further aggravated due to travelers from these emerging markets.

2 Methodology
Two main research questions have guided this protocol: People willing to visit a
WHS, and visiting tourism-related websites…
• RQ1 … are they likely to be informed about the fact that such falls are enlisted
among the WHSs?
§ RQ1a: do relevant websites offer the piece of information that Victoria Falls is a
World Heritage Site?
§ RQ1b: in case they provide it, are the reasons for such enlisting further explained
and elaborated upon?
• RQ2 … are they likely to be informed about issues related with sustainable tourism
at that destination?
§ RQ2a: do relevant websites mention the issue of “sustainability”, naming it
explicitly?
§ RQ2b: in case they do not mention it, do they anyway cover issues related with
sustainable tourism?
To answer those questions a relevant WHS has been identified in Victoria Falls (VF),
a trans-boundary property located between Zambia and Zimbabwe (Livingstone
District of Southern Province of the Republic of Zambia and Hwange District of
Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe). The site is rounded by two natural parks
(Victoria Falls National Park in the Zimbabwean side, and Mosi-oa-Tunya National
Park in the Zambian side) in a poor economic area, but the uniqueness of the place
has attracted national and international investors and produced economic
development around the site.
To define the relevant corpus of websites, several queries on the most used search
engines (google.com, bing.com) have been performed, with the following keywords:
Zambia, Zimbabwe, Livingstone Victoria Falls, accommodation, lodge, bed and
breakfast, hotel, national park, information, travel, world heritage site (all queries
have been performed from Lugano, Switzerland, in the period June-August 2014).
Links provided in the first two pages have been considered for inclusion. Further
sources have been directly used to integrate the corpus of relevant online resources:
the two national DMOs and tripadvisor.com, in order to find the names of hotels in
the area (whose names have then been entered in google.com to check the availability
of a related website); and iTunesStore, in order to check the availability of ad-hoc
mobile apps.
After removing all duplicates, a final sample of 91 online resources has been
identified and, then, classified in five categories (moving from the suggestion by
Strickland-Munro, Allison and Moore (2010) (Table 1). Then, a content analysis of
such online resources have been performed. While assessing the presence of a clear
info about VF being a WHS (RQ1a); the presence of further info about the reasons
why it has been enlisted among WHSs (RQ1b), and the use of the very term
“sustainability” (RQ2a) is quite a straightforward task, answering RQ2b required
much more efforts.
Table 1 presents data to answer RQ1; moving to the second RQ, results are presented
in Table 2. To answer it, the Sustainable Tourism for Development Guidebook
(UNWTO, 2013b) framework has been applied, through its five pillars to be
considered for the evaluation of tourism performance: (1) tourism policy and
governance; (2) economic performance, investment and competitiveness; (3)
employment, decent work and human capital; (4) poverty reduction and social
inclusion; and (5) sustainability of the natural and cultural environment. For each
pillar, several sub-pillars have been defined, to assess if the corresponding relevant
topics are covered by the online resources.
The first pillar is rarely tackled, which is quite understandable, due to the fact that our
analysis is based on dedicated Public Authorities and businesses.
Pillar two recognizes the relevance of tourists through investments, commitment and
quality and diversity of the product offered: all hospitality players do present contents
related with such issue; almost all mobile apps (83.3%), several tour operators (38.5),
and one DMO do tackle related issues.
Pillar three here deals with the treatment reserved to the own workers: this topic is
rarely covered; in 50% of the cases where the topic is directly touched are by
Zambian hospitality players.
Pillar four here refers to teaching/education initiatives, orphan care, and other
relevant community volunteering projects, and it is definitely relevant for Public
Authorities (60%), followed by DMOs (41.7%), and Tour Operators (15.4%). 60% of
Zambian hospitality players do cover it, compared to only 9% of the Zimbabwean
ones. Neither Mobile apps nor Magazines and Newspapers touch this issue.
Pillar five (conservation projects and volunteering) is quite present, especially when it
comes to the natural environment (only a few DMOs and some hospitality players do
touch also the cultural environment protection). All Public Authorities and National
Parks provide contents about this area, along with Newspapers and Magazines.
However, only a few businesses address these issues: DMOs (33.3%), Tour operators
(23.1%), and Hospitality players (26.9%), for this the last category it can be noted
again a substantial difference between the Zimbabweans (13.6%) and the Zambians
(36.7%).

3 Discussion and Conclusion

The analysis conducted taking the perspective of a person navigating online to collect
information on a possible travel to the VF has been able to answer all research
questions. In Summarizing, people willing to visit VF, and visiting tourism-related
websites…
• RQ1 … are they likely to be informed about the fact that such falls are
enlisted among the WHSs?
o No: there are just a few mentionings of the fact that VF is a WHS.
o 23.0% of main relevant resources do state it (RQ1a), and even less resources
(5.5%) do further elaborate such information (RQ1b).
• RQ2 … are they likely to be informed about issues related with sustainable
tourism at that destination?
o No: their attention is likely not to be drawn to such issues, at least explicitly.
 o In fact, only in very few cases (6.6%) the sustainability issue is named
explicitly (RQ2a); one can find many more resources tackling topics relevant for
sustainable tourism, with a particular attention to Poverty reduction & social
inclusion, and to Sustainability of the natural & cultural environment (RQ2b).
Results show that in the case of Victoria Falls, there is room for improving the online
communication of both the value recognised by the inscription in the UNESCO, as
well as of the closely connected sustainable tourism issue, and of its several facets.
Online communication might improve the likability of prospective travellers to be
made aware of such issues, to learn (informally) about the several implications of
being a WHS, and to be (somehow) educated to behave in a sustainable and
responsible manner in case of visit.
Results show also that different approaches can be noted when it comes to online
communication of hospitality players in Zambia and in Zimbabwe: the former ones
appear to be definitely more interested in sharing information about WHS and
sustainable tourism than the others.

Table 1. Explicit mentions of the fact that Victoria Falls is a WHS (percentages refer
to each category).

# – % of
# – % of
resources
Relevant resources
% further
resources explicitly
elaborating
stating it
it
Public Authorities 5 5.5 - -
National parks 1 1.1 1 – 100.0 1 – 100.0%
DMOs 12 13.2 5 – 41.7 1 – 8.3%
Tour Operators 13 14.3 6 – 46.0 -
Hospitality players 52 57.1 3 – 5.8 -
Mobile Apps 6 6.6 4 – 66.7 1 – 16.7%
Newspapers / magazines 2 2.2 2 – 100.0 2 – 100.0%
TOTAL 91 100.0 21 – 23.0% 5 – 5.5%

Table 2. Use of the very term “sustainability” within the analysed online resources,
and coverage of issues relevant for tourism sustainability.

UNWTO Book on Sustainability 2013

Sustain-
#–% Employ-
# Tourism Economic Poverty ability of
resources ment
on- policy perform- reductio the
using the decent
line and ance, invest, n& natural &
term work,
res. govern- competi- social cultural
“sustain- human
ance tiveness inclusion environ-
ability” capital
ment
Public
Authoritie 5 3 – 60.0% - - 2 – 40.0% 3 – 60.0% 5 – 100.0%
s
National
1 - - - - - 1 – 100.0%
parks
 UNWTO Book on Sustainability 2013
Sustain-
#–% Employ-
# Tourism Economic Poverty ability of
resources ment
on- policy perform- reductio the
using the decent
line and ance, invest, n& natural &
term work,
res. govern- competi- social cultural
“sustain- human
ance tiveness inclusion environ-
ability” capital
ment
DMOs 12 - - 1 – 8.3% - 5 – 41.7% 4 – 33.3%
Tour
13 - 1 – 7.7% 5 – 38.5% - 2 – 15.4% 3 – 23.1%
Operators
Hospitality 20 –
52 3 – 5.8% 6 – 11.5% 52 – 100.0% 4 – 7.7% 14 – 26.9%
players 38.5%
In Zambia 6 – 20.0 18 –
30 3 – 10.0% 30 – 100.0% 3 – 10.0% 11 – 36.7%
% 60.0%
in
22 - - 22 – 100.0% 1 – 4.5% 2 – 9.0% 3 – 13.6%
Zimbabwe
Mobile
6 - - 5 – 83.3% - - 1 – 16.7%
Apps
Newspapers
2 - - - - - 2 – 100.0%
/magazines
30 – 30 –
TOTAL 91 6 – 6.6% 7 – 7.7% 63 – 69.0% 6 – 6.6%
33.0% 33.0%

References*
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*
All online resources have been checked in August, 2014.